


Kisses and Coin Tricks

by devilinthedetails



Category: PIERCE Tamora - Works, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Desire, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Gen, Jokes, Kisses, Pranks, Queen's Riders, Teasing, change, coin tricks, more than friends, tradition
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-12
Updated: 2018-08-12
Packaged: 2019-06-26 08:31:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15659562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devilinthedetails/pseuds/devilinthedetails
Summary: Sometimes with desire and sometimes with embarrassment, Miri and Evin negotiate the changes and traditions in their friendship.





	Kisses and Coin Tricks

Kisses and Coin Tricks

“Welcome to Corus, Miri.” Evin’s voice rang like a bird call across the stall where Miri was unsaddling her pony. As was informal tradition—the only kind of tradition Evin and Miri’s friendship, which mimicked the free-spirited structure of the Riders to which they had both pledged their service, even their lives, had—Evin had joined Miri in the stables to welcome her back to the barracks that had become both their homes upon her Group’s return to Corus. That expectation that the friend who was in the barracks would come out to greet, no matter the hour, the one who had just arrived was a constant around which they could build their lives in a whirling world of change. 

When she looked up from loosening the cinches of her pony’s saddle, Miri had the discomfiting realization that even this ground that she had believed to be stable had shifted beneath her feet. He who had always been so quick with his jokes, his pranks, and his Player’s magic tricks had somehow been elevated to Group Commander as an insignia on his uniform attested. She blinked, wondering if it was some trick of the dim light in the stables. It wasn’t. The badge remained obstinately present. 

Masking her unease with a quip since she didn’t want him to imagine that she was tainting with envy a friendship that had always been marvelously pure of jealousy, Miri gestured at the insignia that had so unsettled her, thinking that if she could laugh about it, it would lose the power to rattle her. “Group Commander, eh? What magic did you have to work to get that position?” 

“Oh, my usual tricks.” Evin’s eyes were the glittering blue of the summer ocean beneath the sand blond of his hair as he offered this flippant reply. It was a change, Miri thought as he crossed the wooden floorboards blanketed with hay, for her to even notice such things, and that uncomfortable awareness that she was seeing her friend as an attractive male—that she was desiring him to hug her and kiss her as lover, not a friend, might—made her cheeks burn with an embarrassment that was even fiercer than her sudden yearning for him. 

“You’re a joke, and you’ll transform our entire organization into a laughingstock within the year.” Miri was proud of herself for keeping her voice so steady that it didn’t betray her newfound desire that maybe wasn’t so new after all. Perhaps it had always blazed beneath the surface of her relationship to Evin, drawing her like a magnet to him from the moment they met, her standing in his shadow as he towered over her. Maybe the only difference now was that she was brave enough to acknowledge her feelings if not to him than at least to herself, the audience to which Evin the Player always said it was the easiest and yet the hardest to lie. 

“You’re one to talk.” Evin must have decided that it was his duty as a friend to fan the flames in her face for he reached forward to pull a silver coin from behind her earlobe. “Look what I found behind your ears. I bet you never scrub there, and there’s a hidden treasure trove to be discovered beneath your earlobes.” 

Miri’s ears blazed, not so much from his teasing but from the fact that once again she had fallen victim to his oldest prank—the first one he had ever played upon her when they had entered training and been terrified of Sarge’s ceaseless bellowing.

“It’s yours.” Evin bowed—another change—and extended the coin to her. 

Their fingers brushed, and Miri could feel the callouses on his tips as she knew he could on hers. She wished that she could kiss the roughness of his fingertips into softness, but since she was his friend and not his lover, she instead raised the coin to her mouth and pressed her lips against it, murmuring, “For luck.” 

“Don’t make me jealous of a coin, Miri.” Evin’s tone was playful but there was an unfamiliar heat behind it and in his gaze as he stared at her mouth with an intensity that made her shiver even though her entire body was on fire in a way she had never imagined was possible. 

“I could kiss you.” Miri leaned forward, dancing her lips across Evin’s. He tasted salty as his sweat but somehow sweet as the honey he dripped into his tea every morning. She could only imagine that she must have tasted of the coin’s metal. “Then you wouldn’t have to be jealous.” 

Before she or Evin could deepen the kiss, her pony snorted and kicked at the floorboards. 

“Someone else wants your attention.” Evin chuckled as they separated and Miri bent to remove her pony’s saddle. 

“I’m making everyone jealous.” Miri answered his laughter with her own as she grabbed a comb and began unknotting the hundreds of tangles in her pony’s hair. It would take at least an hour to coax out all the brambles that were evidence of her race across rough terrain to bring bandits to justice, but she would have the memory of her first kiss with Evin to make the time fly faster than a pony’s gallop across an open, sun-warmed field.


End file.
